The Biggest Obstacle to Your Sales Success Resides Inside You

by Dave Kahle

Recently, one of my clients recommended that I compile a series of posts on the most important lessons I’ve learned over my 30-year career as a consultant, working with over 500 different organizations.  This is one of those lessons: For the overwhelming majority of people, the biggest obstacle to their success resides inside them.

           While I have seen this lesson in operation in scores of the companies and sales forces that’ve worked with, I first stumbled across it as a young man.  Here’s the story.

           I had been the number one salesperson for the company I was with, but didn’t see any long-term opportunities, and decided to look for another position.  I found a new job, selling surgical staplers to surgeons in the operating room.  IN many ways, the job was the opposite of the one I had.  It paid a draw for six months against a 100% commission plan, and you had to buy your demonstration material and literature from the company.  I looked at the amount of existing business in the territory I was to get, and decided that if I doubled the business, I would be back to where I had been, financially, and then could improve my standard of living from there. 

           So, I opted to take the risk and headed out to New York city for six weeks of sales training.  While I was gone, the manager who had hired me left for a promotion, and I had a new manager.  When I returned from sales training, he had urgent news for me.  He had rearranged the sales territories, and the one I was now to be assigned had only 1/3 of the existing business in it as the territory for which I had been hired.

           I got angry and upset. How could they do this to me?   It didn’t look like I could make a living. So, I began to look for another job immediately. I discovered that everyone with whom I interviewed thought it a negative that I was looking for another job so soon after having accepted that one.  I couldn’t find another job. 

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           I found myself between the proverbial rock and hard place.  I couldn’t make a living with the revised territory, and I couldn’t get another job. I was angry and bitter.

           Then, one day, out of the blue, I had a realization.  It wasn’t them; it was me! Yes, the company had treated me badly.  Yet, the product was still incredible, and the opportunity was still huge.  The problem wasn’t them; it was my bitterness and anger that was holding me back.  The problem with my performance wasn’t them, it was me.  

           When I realized that the issues holding me back were within me, I then had the power to do something about it. That realization was like a huge weight off my shoulders.  I wasn’t a victim.  I could change myself.

           While I initially stumbled across this lesson – that for most people, the biggest obstacle to their success resides inside them – I found it confirmed repeatedly in my work as a sales consultant. Here’s how it manifests.

Focusing on circumstances

           It must be human nature to look for the causes of our problems in the external environment instead of looking inward and searching ourselves.  In my work with salespeople, I’ve often heard that the problem was the competition, the customer’s unrealistic expectations, the personality of the customer, their company’s inability to do something, etc.  It never occurs to most salespeople that the problem might be them. Did they create a trusting relationship?  Did they strive to know the customer’s situation as deeply as possible?  Did they present the best solution in a persuasive and thorough way?  Have they identified and addressed the customer’s concerns?

           Over 100 years ago, James Allen observed. 

“Men are often interested in improving their circumstance, but are unwilling to improve themselves, they therefore remain bound.”

~ James Allen

           The situation is complicated by the fact that sometimes the issue is in the ... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

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